backup VMs without shutting down

[wassy83]

Hi to all,
just want to ask something about backups.. I have an IBM server 2 x xeon E-5 quad core 2,8Ghz 32GB ram OS is Debian7 cli and virtualbox is virtualbox5 headless + phpvirtualbox(I modded this to have compatibility with VBox5). I have several VMs very critical for my job(like mail gateway, dns server, mail server ecc) all is working very good, and I like the simplicity of vrtualbox compared with other Hyper Visors like vmware even in an enterprise environment.. but the problem with virtualbox is that if I want to make a good backup, first of all I have to shutdown the VMs and then export with the very usefull vbox utility.. but of course I can't shutdown a critical service like mail server.. so I tried to simply copy through Winscp from the debian server to a windows workstation the entire "Virtualbox VMs" folder without shutting down any VM, then I simply tried to launch the copied VMs from the windows workstation(with the same virtualbox version and after registering each one) and.. everything works fine! I received no errors and all service where running good.. so is this a good way to make backups without shutting down the VM or am I in a fault? If this is a good way I will create a scheduled backup plan with rsync or TAR.. this will be perfect for me!
many thanks

[mpack]

You can run a backup task from inside the VM, just as you would with any physical PC.

If you run it on the host you really need to shut the VM down, especially if data is critical, because the method you are using now risks serious and cumulative virtual disk corruption.

[wassy83]

You can run a backup task from inside the VM, just as you would with any physical PC.

If you run it on the host you really need to shut the VM down, especially if data is critical, because the method you are using now risks serious and cumulative virtual disk corruption.

Hmm.. maybe I can make scheduled images of the OS with acronis true image,make a backup of the VM_name.vbox and then restore the entire VM using Acronis restore cd..

[mpack]

Yes, a single host VM backup would be enough, then your Acronis image running inside the guest would bring it up to date.

[wassy83]

Yes, a single host VM backup would be enough, then your Acronis image running inside the guest would bring it up to date.

Many many thanks!

[xlepws]

You can run a backup task from inside the VM, just as you would with any physical PC.

If you run it on the host you really need to shut the VM down, especially if data is critical, because the method you are using now risks serious and cumulative virtual disk corruption.

Hmm.. maybe I can make scheduled images of the OS with acronis true image,make a backup of the VM_name.vbox and then restore the entire VM using Acronis restore cd..

..mmh..how would this work exactly?
I was wondering exactly the same question here, how to backup my VMs without shutting them down.
What I currently do is..shutting it down :-/ then manually copy the folder of the VM I want to backup to a different hard-disk.

Say my VM is a Win host and say I have Acronis TrueImage or similar so I can copy the OS backups to backup-disk (via shared folder)..what should I do next?

Thank you!

p.s.: I had thought of using "continuous snapshots", but reading here and there, this approach is not recommended (the snapshot-feature of VB not being that stable): https://dzone.com/articles/backing-virtual-machines

[Perryg]

p.s.: I had thought of using "continuous snapshots"

Snapshots are not backups. If anything they resemble the restore function of Windows registry, and that is stretching it as well.